Rockefeller Group $100 Million for City Disaster Aid

By Patrick Cole -
May 14, 2013

The Rockefeller Foundation marked the
centennial of its founding with the announcement this morning of
a $100 million global disaster-preparation fund aimed primarily
at helping cities handle climate-related or man-made disasters.

“With the amount of climate change that has already
occurred and is already affecting people, we need to be building
resilience so that we can rebound more quickly and more
effectively,” said Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin by phone. “The prediction is that by 2015, 75 percent of
the world’s population will be living in cities. So urbanization
and cities is a massive issue.”

The foundation will begin taking grant applications in
August from city governments. Applicants must submit a detailed
plan for better handling disasters that also serves the needs of
the poor or vulnerable.

Cities will be chosen by an organization the foundation
will hire to administer the program. A panel of urban-planning
experts will advise on the selection of candidates. Three rounds
of winners will be announced in the two years ending December
2015.

“Applicants will have to show how they’re going to
incorporate a wide range of constituents in both the planning
and implementation, from academia to civil society to
business,” Rodin said. “Our experience shows us that all
sectors of the city need to be engaged.”

Resilience Officer

The winners will get funding to establish a “chief
resilience officer” who would develop and oversee a master
recovery plan. The cities selected can decide which sectors of
the community need the most assistance.

“This will cover not only climate change and environmental
resilience, but also economic and financial resilience,” Rodin
said. “We certainly saw in Hurricane Sandy the financial system
grinding to a halt for two days. We’re now seeing that the
financial and economic sectors need to make resilience plans.”

The program will also fund technical support and resources
for the disaster-preparation plan and help cities find
additional private- and public-sector support.

In the 100 years since it was chartered in New York on May
14, 1913, the Rockefeller Foundation has funded Nobel Prize-winning researchers, helped stave off pandemics and assisted
communities ravaged by natural disasters. It created the Green
Revolution in the 1940s that fed millions.

Money Given

Until World War II, the foundation gave more foreign aid
than the U.S. government. Today, it awards about $130 million a
year to grantees and ranks 16th in assets among foundations,
with about $3.5 billion. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
with more than $33 billion, is the world’s largest charity.

For its second century, Rodin leads an organization that
sees climate change as a core issue affecting food production in
the developing world. It has given millions to African and Asian
communities to help them survive floods, drought and poor
harvests.

“In the 21st century, we think that globalization and
urbanization and climate change are the significant problems
facing people and systems,” Rodin said. “We have two simple
goals, to build greater resilience and economic opportunity. We
are America’s first global foundation and we continue to take
that global perspective.”

Katrina Lessons

Rodin said the foundation’s experience with communities
such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina will be an asset to
those cities selected for the Centennial Challenge. Rockefeller
helped bring together New Orleans community leaders, experts and
politicians, which led to a recovery plan, she said.

“Rockefeller was among the organizations that founded the
field of urban planning about 50 years ago,” Rodin said.
“We’ve been hard at work on the research and practice of urban
planning and actually working with cities to introduce the
thought-leading ideas.”

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement that
his city will apply to the Centennial Challenge because the
program will better equip it “to manage the challenges coming
our way.”